Finally my new site is ready!! it will be being updated periodically, right now im in Toronto so i take the chance to post this work i did for a mexican publication a couple of years ago… check it out.. cheers!
My website is being updated, please come back in a couple of days and will be completed.
© Mauricio Palos 2012
I’ve never worked in an office before in my life, and hope I wont have to do so. The Only formal job I had before becoming a photographer was in a marketing agency, where I used to do surveys on the streets for new products, then when I enter a newspaper I only had to do short drops by the office to edit my work and prepare it for the editors.
When I see this photograph, I feel that I can’t breed. It’s amazing how office workers try to have a sense of the outside world with elements such at this landscape; most of them have to be maybe 8 hours inside 4 walls.
I would like to photograph it, what does it means to be someone that has to be there all day? When I was little my father was a bureaucrat, he used to work for the government in Mexico City, sometimes I used to go to the office with him, and hide in the desks playing with rubbers, clips and used paper sheets. Sometimes I took home some erasers and pens.
I don’t know what my father felt during that period of his life, what where his feelings about it?
© Mauricio Palos 2012
I´ve been buying vintage prints for almost two years now, im more interested in images that are related to Mexican politics (that does not mean that i do not buy other kind of prints) what i want is to create a group of images that talk about the political mexican history after 1930 and before 1994. Just for fun.
For example, i have a photograph credited to Pedro Ramirez Vazquez (the architect of The Azteca Football Stadium) that shows mexican president Gustavo Diaz Ordaz (1964-1970) sited in a podium with part of his ministries, and elite army characters, only their faces and their bodies are lightened, probably by two directional big lamps. All the background is black. He is involved on the killings of the students movement in ´68 during his rule. Another one shows a group portait of workers from the National Union of the National Revolutionary Party (P.N.R.). During the presidency of Emilio Portes Gil was indeed one of the most transcendental political events: the founding of an official party, the P.N.R. On September 1, 1928, president Calles read his latest report to Congress president of the Union, which proclaimed the end of warlordism to make way for the era of the institutions.The image is credited to Foto Carrillo El Nacional; Diario Popular.
The most recent one is an image from Francisco Mata a mexican photographer who worked in the mexican newspaper La Jornada. The image shows Emilio Azcarraga Milmo founder of Televisa a TV Network Company. In 1990, he was self-declared a soldier of the Revolutionary Institutional Party (P.R.I.). Azcarraga Milmo quickly managed to transform the main pressure group within the Mexican political system. the top of the image shows a banner hanged in a public event with the legend “We are the Party”.
My favorite is an image by Andres Garay that shows Rosario Ibarra de Piedra during a demonstration in down town Mexico City. The image pictures her up in the shoulders of someone, she is shouting and raising her left arm. Police anti-uprising officers are shown stopping the way of the demonstration into the May 1st parade in the year 1988. She was the presidential candidate for the Workers Revolutionary Party (P.R.T.), some 5 minutes later i run into her in La Lagunilla market, i show her the photograph, then i took a photo of her with the image.
Im not sure what im going to do with these, but every time a see a flea market i go straight to the people that sell vintage prints, these weekend in the Los Sapos flea market i got the one showing the union workers from P.N.R. for only 3 USD.
A message from Mexico.
I did this story for COLORS last year, i met Enrique who sell flowers mostly for funerals, it was one of the most funny assignments from 2011, not for what he does, but the kind of person he is. We both love food and share the same interest and care about life. I want to continue working with him, maybe he will be a character for a documentary film im doing regarding violence in Mexico.
I love my work, partly because I earn a lot of money. I decorate churches for funerals and weddings. This year I did the flowers for almost 300 funerals, but I only worked on six weddings; it’s not a good time for weddings.
Luis Enrique Villa Lopez, 40 years old, Ciudad Juarez, Mexico
photos by Mauricio Palos for COLORS With Love
Last wednesday in the Instituto Cervantes from Prague was held the opening from the exhibition Peso y Levedad, where i am participating among with some other great photographers from Latin America, the first show was in Madrid last year, and we had the chance to be in Photoespaña for a couple of days. Among the photographers are great friends like Eunice Adorno, Diego Levy, Santiago Hafford, Myriam Meloni and some others. Laura Terré curated the exhibition with Rosina Cazali. All images were taken by Laura.
http://praga.cervantes.es/FichasCultura/Ficha77412_63_12.htm
I photographed this couple at a bikers reunion in Monterrey, a mexican state located near the Rio Grande Valley border. They are from Reynosa, a border town that use to be really quiet before the war on drugs hit Mexico. Later talking with Rolandini another biker who belongs to Los Cuervos (the group that held the reunion) i found out that bikers share something similar as photographers do. The camera and the bike is just an excuse to get out of your house and explore your surroundings, kind of a one way ticket to a new life outside your neighborhood.
© Mauricio Palos 2012
Monterrey, Mexico.
The Magic Valley
I am exploring the lives of the people in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, taking as a starting point the life of my uncle Manuel Salazar, who lives in the area since he married Alicia native to the area. Manuel sell life insurance to the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic men’s fraternal benefit society. Trough my uncles work I’m entering the valley and the people who inhabit it. I photograph people, focusing on those who carry several generations on the land, those that were before the Mexican territory was sold to the United States.
© Mauricio Palos. 2012
Brownsville, TX.
